


Rose-tinted

by telekinesiskid



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Death, Dream Adam vs Real Adam, Dream Thievery, M/M, Murder, Noah pretends he's in a bad paranormal activity film, POV Second Person, Ronan is Gay and Afraid, Secret Boyfriend idkkk, The Dream Thieves Spoilers, Wet Dream, doppleganger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid/pseuds/telekinesiskid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You wonder if this makes you a small-time God. You’ve created your very own Adam."</p><p>Set during DT, Ronan accidentally pulls Adam from a wet dream. Now he has to figure out what to do with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if someone has done this idea before or even done this to death lmao I'm sorry if that's the case. I've been sitting on this story for a few weeks now - I just needed to make the intro less shitty. Also I'm sorry about the confused tenses :v I wasn't really sure how to fix that without flat out rewriting everything.... 
> 
> Again, I haven't finished DT yet so, like..... if I majorly fucked up, it's because of that.

You think you know what happened. You _think._

It was a bad night. A lonely, sleepless night. You lolled and rolled back and forth across your mattress, on top of the thin summer sheets, sticking to your tattooed back, slick with sweat, your eyes screwed shut, and you wished that there was someone here with you – someone in particular – to help ease you through the night.

No, you didn’t wish. Wishing is for idiots. _You_ dreamt it and you made it happen.

But you hadn’t meant to. You really didn’t even think that it was possible. You had spent the majority of your restless, patchwork dreams in the pleasant company of Adam: in the backseat of Gansey’s car (your head on his lap), beside him in the booth at Nino’s (his hand finally took yours), out in Cabeswater (you stared on wretched as his ears pricked to the rustle of the trees – he turned to you and said in that insubstantial, soundless way that dreams did: “it’s okay”), in his little room at St. Agnes (he whispered “thank you” and wrapped his arms around you), and eventually in your room at Monmouth Manufacturing (you put your lips on his neck and tasted him and made him solid).

You were interrupted. That’s what it was. It was a rude awakening, in more ways than just one. You were abruptly brought out of sleep mid-kiss – you were still entwined around his body, filled with the heady scent, taste, touch, and sounds of _Adam_ – and you were ripped so fast from the dream that you forgot to let him go. He came with you.

You sat bolt upright in your bed and your eyes shot open. You felt the sheen of sweat all over you, almost like you’d dozed under a warm drizzle. Over your ragged breaths you heard Gansey quietly swear from outside your door. You heard it again, what exactly woke you: a slow wooden drag and a sharp metallic clank. You didn’t know what the fuck was happening out there but you couldn’t bring yourself to care; your whole body was filled with the pounding alarm of your heartbeat. It’s all you felt – your ecstasy dissipated and gave way to fear.

You felt another heartbeat in the room, another warm presence beside you, and your first thought was this: _It can’t happen._ But it _had_ happened; you knew now that it could. You hadn’t planned it; it hadn’t been anything remotely close to a lucid dream – as far as you were aware, Adam was taking _you_ along for the ride – and you didn’t _want_ it to happen.

Gansey continued to cuss and grunt and heave whatever piece of furniture he’d managed to haul in. Your hand trembled in the dark as you reached out for your beside lamp, and all your arm hairs stood on end when your fingers brushed something moving, something with life, something that hadn’t been there before.

You switched on the light and jumped back so far that you almost fell off the bed.

It was Adam.

Only, it wasn’t Adam.

It was Dream Adam.

He was awake and alert, just like you, just like a human. He stared at you his silent surprise, his brown cropped hair mussed and his cheeks flushed red, as yours probably still were too. He looked every inch like _Adam,_ and it was simultaneously painful and wondrous. He wasn’t quite the awkward and lanky stick of a boy he always was; he fit into your bed quite comfortably, like he’d slept there before, night after night after night. His eyes shone and his confusion was pure as he slowly looked about himself and tried to come to terms with what he was – _how_ he was.

He parted his lips to speak; you slapped a hand over his mouth and held it there. He didn’t fight you on this. He looked as though he _understood,_ and he was waiting for exactly the same thing that you were: for Gansey to go to sleep.

Your heart still raced, like it wanted to leap straight from your chest. You tried to keep your eyes firmly on Adam’s – _Dream_ Adam’s – but it was so hard not to notice that he was every inch naked. You haven’t even _seen_ Adam naked – you’ve only ever seen him change his shirt in front of you, once, and even then you were still too politely flustered to watch – so you obviously had a lot of blanks to fill. You think you filled them in pretty good, actually. You just went with what you liked, because you liked _Adam._

You wonder if this makes you a small-time God. You’ve created your very own Adam.

You think there are more biblical jokes to be made here, but you’re not in the mood.

The room was warm with a second living, breathing person in it. The air felt moist, stifling. You felt hot and uncomfortable and stuck in your own skin. You eventually took your hand away from Dream Adam’s mouth, and your chest tightened as he pressed his lips to your fingers. In the dream it was nice and surreal and you could unwind and enjoy yourself, safe in the knowledge that none of this would ever leave your mind, but now you don’t feel so safe anymore. Adam was never supposed to know about you, what you felt for him. You were supposed to wait it out and ride it out in private, behind closed doors, behind snarky comments and unnecessary insults and pointed disinterest, until it all went away. Until you no longer felt desirous of that little treasure trail whenever he stretched and made his shirt ride up. Until you no longer felt sharp twinges of yearning whenever he nervously, self-consciously took Blue’s hand and not yours.

You don’t think creating a Dream Adam was a particularly smart move, even if it was unintentional.

For a number of reasons.

 

Your eyes sting with fatigue. But you know you won’t be sleeping again anytime soon, not with this mess you’ve created. You think you may have to forgo sleep altogether. What with the night horrors and _this,_ you just can’t risk it. You’re starting to cross a line that should never, ever be crossed.

You’re still keenly aware of Adam’s skin contacting yours. You edge yourself neatly away until you’re out of bed and then you hit the play button on your stereo. You dial back the volume out of courtesy to everyone else – not that anyone seems to sleep in this place – and you look back over your shoulder at Adam. He continues to just sit there with that doe-eyed expression on his face, that slight tilt of his head, that little invisible smile on his alert face, and you suddenly realise that he’s staring at you the way you’ve wanted him to stare at you for some time now. Like…

For all that the look on his face appeals to you, your eyes still try to wander and stare at something else. You yank some old clothes free from your half-opened, over-stuffed drawers and toss them over without a word. Adam flashes you a grateful smile, stands, and immediately starts dressing, before you’ve even turned around. It’s so _strange._ This Adam isn’t self-conscious like the other one. He dresses in front of you like he’s done it a million times before and he’s not at all bothered by your roaming eyes on him. You’re thankful he doesn’t catch you watching and try to make a show out of it, or else you’ll be back to square one: blind panic.

Fully dressed, he walks over to you with more confidence and less slump than the other Adam. The Real Adam. He slips an arm around your waist and you’re too stunned to move it away. He says something to you, but you miss it completely to the heartbeat in your ears, the bass in the walls. He repeats it for you after you quirk a confused expression: “I’m from your dream, aren’t I?”

He doesn’t phrase it like a question. He already seems to know.

You think that’ll make it easier, soften the blow. “Yeah,” you spit out, finally, and you pull on a long muscle tee to cover the stain on your boxes. You’ll change them later. “I, um… I dreamt you. Just now.”

You really don’t want to tell him the circumstances of that dream. But it doesn’t take a boy as smart as him to work out what exactly the context was. He came out _naked,_ for Christ’s sake.

He hums and peers around your room, back at your bed. The sheets are tousled and stained with sweat and God knows what else. “Good dream?” he asks, a smirk to his voice, and you feel your face burn up in humiliation. Your hands curl up into white-knuckled fists but Adam seems to read you all too easily and heads you off before you can break anything; he says, “It’s okay, Ronan. I don’t imagine you meant to do this. I can keep a secret.”

He calms you down, somehow. You choke on a laugh. “What secret? The secret that I actually… _like_ you or the secret that I brought you outta my fuckin’ dream?”

Adam shrugs. “Both could remain safe.”

You shake your head. You wipe the sweat off your brow with your tee. “I can’t fuckin’ keep you here like this,” you murmur, not looking at him. “It… It just wouldn’t be right. I should… I… _argh_ , _FUCK._ ”

Your foot kicks out at a nearby trash bin and litter flies everywhere as the bin bounces away. Torn up bits of paper and crushed beer cans and junk food packets spring free onto your grubby floors, but it’s not nearly enough destruction; you need more. Your hands itch for it, your breathing hitches and fumes. You want to grab your bed by the headboard and tear the frame to pieces and rip chunks out of your mattress and drown your terrified screams in your pillow.

You make it as far as wrenching the headboard free when Adam stops you, and you note that that’s a first. He usually keeps out of your way when you decide to redecorate like this, but not this time. He winds his arms around you and plants his cheek on your shoulder and orders you evenly, “Ronan, calm down. Use your words, you animal.”

You freeze – not because Adam told you to, but because you’re so overwhelmed with the _familiarity_ of the embrace, how _easy_ it comes, and you wish you could just stop and return the affection like that, you really do, but it’s just so… different. In the dream, Adam was yours. But here, outside of your head, Adam is nowhere near being close to yours. Real Adam has made it clear time and time again that he doesn’t want to belong to anybody, least of all brutes like you who don’t know how to express themselves without violence. This Adam isn’t _yours._

You feel him kiss the back of your neck, tender and dear, and your knees collapse weakly onto the bed. You drop the headboard. Adam runs his soothing hands up and down your back as you lean far forward to hide your face, tracing the Celtic knots of your tattoo, and you struggle not to weep. It’s everything you’ve wanted from him. If you truly were a monster then you would be happier with this, you’d be _fine_ with it. You would be absolutely fine, but you’re _not_.

You can’t face him. You lie down and curl up on your side, and you don’t have the strength to push him away as he becomes your big spoon. He presses little heartfelt kisses to the skin behind your ear and he whispers three words that you had never hoped to hear from your own lips, let alone his. It makes every inch of you roil in distress.

Your stereo stays on all night, but you fall asleep to the tune of your discorded, cluttered mix of thoughts. It plays to the chorus of: _This isn’t right, this isn’t right, this isn’t right._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhh it's really awesome to see some of you are interested in this story!! lmao I guess I'll keep it coming then???
> 
> Thanks for your support! <3

Gansey’s persistent, as always. You turn him into your mother so easily, and you’re sorry about that, but also you’re not. He’s still so chipper for a boy who gets about as much sleep as you do – which is little to none – and you don’t know where he gets the energy each morning to force you out of bed, into your uniform, and into his car. If you tell him that you lost your tie, he finds you a new one. If you tell him that you feel too sick, he hands you some pills. If you tell him that there’s not much point in showing up since you didn’t do the homework, he scolds you but lets you copy and tells you that you’ll do it _next time_.

Christ. He really is your mother.

Well, you suppose someone has to be.

You sometimes find it a little endearing that you’re so well looked after, but not today. What starts as a gentle knock of a reminder ends as a series of angry raps half an hour later, and Gansey yells at you that he has things to do. He won’t wait for you anymore.

You call back a few expletives that he’s probably heard enough times from you not to take offence at, but you finally hear the second floor door slam as Gansey decides that you’re not worth the effort. You hear the Pig’s engine roar from the carpark outside and only then do you decide that it’s safe to leave your bedroom.

You let Adam take the first shower while you sit at Gansey’s desk and stare at the Cabeswater maps he’s printed and rub your temples too roughly, rolling the skin there. Your stomach is empty but you feel too terrible to eat anything. You think you could collapse of exhaustion at any second, but every little creak and shudder and cold spot of the old manufacturing building keeps you on your toes. _No one is here,_ you try to tell yourself. _No one will see him._

Adam walks out of the shower some ten minutes later with a towel around his waist, hand combing through his shaggy damp hair. You’re starting to notice all the little inconsistencies to him in the hard, natural light. Just like you hadn’t been able to pull out an exact replica of Kavinsky’s sunnies, you hadn’t been able to pull out an exact replica of Adam Parrish. The most standout thing about him is that his colouring is off. His hair is not so much dirt-coloured as it is dust-coloured, more mousey and soft, less abused by the sun. His skin is tan and rose, as it is on Real Adam, but it’s somehow rosier. Rose-tinted.

His eyes look so blue; they’re practically bioluminescent.

He smiles easily at you like he didn’t have to break his face to do it.

You swallow hard.

“Do you have any more clothes?” he asks, and it takes you a couple of seconds to move up and back to your bedroom. You fish out as many as you can – you’d brought all your clothes from the Barns with you but you don’t tend to wear anything with too much colour these days; you’re just blues and blacks now – and you toss them all out onto the bed to let Adam pick. He usually sports faded, frayed tees and holey jeans, but he picks a nicer ensemble than that, now that it’s available to him.

He stands before you. He opens out his arms and then drops them to his side. He looks remarkably content with the burden of knowing that he’s just the hazy dream edition of himself. Not quite sex-bot, not quite authentic. Ideal.

“So,” he says. “What happens now?”

“Fuck if I know,” you mutter back, looking away. You make it sound as if it’s his responsibility, as if it’s _his_ fault he exists. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “I don’t suppose we’d… see the others?”

You laugh, cruel and humourless. “Y’know, I get the feeling Gansey would prefer you to the _Real_ Adam. But I think that might hurt Real Adam’s feelings.” You look up at him, into his perfect blue eyes and try very hard not to swoon. “You’re different to him. You’re not as…” You know the word you want to use. Your face screws up a little as you say it. “Proud.”

Dream Adam laughs. “Is that a quality you don’t like about him?”

You shrug and glance away. “Can you hear out your left ear?”

“I can.” He snaps his fingers beside his ear and smiles. “You made me perfect.”

“There’s no such thing as perfect,” you mumble and head out the door. You need some water. You run the tap over a glass and when you next look back it’s overflown. You down the whole thing and then you wonder why you feel sick and bloated.

Adam followed you out. He studies the miniature Henrietta township on Gansey’s floor space. “We can’t let the other Adam see me, obviously. But maybe Gansey could…?”

You shake your head. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”

Adam pokes at a little still-drying papier-mâché rooftop. “He wouldn’t have to know that I came from your wet dream.”

“Oh Christ just _shut_ _up_ ,” you snap, and he raises his eyes to you. “I’m not even okay with _you_ knowing, let alone… _argh._ ” You chuck the empty glass into the sink and it’s a miracle that it doesn’t shatter apart. You leave quite an impressive crack in the brim, though. Mom will be mad.

“I’m sorry,” Adam says before you can say anything else, something regrettable. “It’s just – I suppose I don’t understand yet how it’s such a sore point for you. From my perspective, you love me just as much as I love you and we don’t tiptoe around the issue.”

“Yeah, we just cut to the fuckin’ chase, don’t we?” you bite back.

He holds up his hands as a plea for peace and your cooperation. “Okay. We won’t tell anyone. So, what about us?”

“There _is_ no ‘us’.”

“What?”

“I _told_ you, I _can’t keep you here_ ,” you raise your voice at him. The distressed face he makes back at you _hurts,_ but you tear on. “I can’t keep you fuckin’ sheltered here from everyone else – someone will find you out sooner or later, and I don’t want to… No, you have to go. I’ve already got one pet, thanks,” you add derisively.

“Wh… Where would I go?” Adam asks, and you make a dismissive hand wave.

“I don’t know. Travel, see the world. I don’t fuckin’ care where you go. You seem to have lost all discernible trace of a Henrietta accent – good for you, it’s just like you always wanted – so why don’t you just leave this fucked-up place and leave me alone.”

You round him and storm back to your bedroom, but you pause at the door. You feel your heart split right in two when you hear a sob cut through the room.

You don’t disappear into your bedroom and slam the door and hide until he leaves, like you planned to. You rest your hot head on the cool, chipped door frame and close your eyes and wish that you had the guts to do this and just walk away and follow through. But you don’t. You want to keep him around almost as much as he wants to stick around.

You’ve never heard Adam cry before. You don’t know what Real Adam would sound like, but Dream Adam just sounds wretched. It appeals to all your primal instincts to help him, like a wounded animal, like a stray child, and you push off the doorframe to walk back to him. You don’t look at his no-doubt dreadful face as you throw your arms around him and clutch him, and he clutches you back just as dearly, clawing into your muscle tee, ensnaring you. He cries into your neck, open and honest and vulnerable. It’s so unlike him. You don’t think Real Adam would ever do this, but seeing just _one_ version of Adam do this with your own two eyes puts you on shaky, uncertain ground.

You think he’s overdoing it when you stop to think about how he must feel. What if your love told you that it was over and to fuck off, just like that. You’d probably cry too.

No you wouldn’t. You’d just swing your fists until they bled. You’d punch whatever didn’t run away from you.

You pat his back. “There, there,” you get out, definitely sarcastic, and then he pulls his head free of your shoulder and kisses you. Instantly, every part of you becomes weightless, warm, brimming with nervous potential. Your eyes slide closed and you tilt your head as you move your mouth lazily against his, in time to the plaintive rhythm he set. He tastes like he smells: like petrol and summer and the sweat of hard work he’s never done. Like _Adam_.

You fall into him all at once, lose yourself in him, and you let yourself do it. You can’t help it. You’re weak; you’re in love.

He tips you off your balance and you fall backwards onto Gansey’s unmade bed. You laugh once, short and sharp and giddy, and then Adam’s mouth is back on yours.

Sorry – _Dream_ Adam’s mouth.

But even if he was born from a dream, he’s still _real._ He’s still _Adam._

How could you not?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noah you creepy creep
> 
> thanks so much for your lovely comments! wahhh they really brighten my day <3

You meet up at Nino’s in the afternoon, at Gansey’s request. You stride in, feeling both over-confident and self-conscious all at once, and you find the four of them, Blue included, in the usual booth. You slip in beside Blue, completely indifferent to how much she loathes being near you, and you snatch up Gansey’s milkshake for a drink. You pretend Adam isn’t there, if only to make it easier for yourself.

Gansey smiles thinly at you, eyes narrowed. “Feeling better then?”

“Loads, thanks.”

He closes his eyes and is silent for a few seconds before he turns back to Adam, cordial smile refreshed. “Anyway.” He thumbs through some sheets in front of him before sliding a couple across the table to Adam. “The homework you missed.”

You watch Adam’s hand take the sheets and nothing else. “Thanks.”

Blue asks him, “You weren’t at school today?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Uh, an opportunity for some extra paid work came up, so…”

You roll your eyes.

Gansey warns in a small voice, “It’s going to be very difficult to get a good education for a good job if you keep missing school for this.”

“It was a one-off,” Adam responds icily.

“Wait,” Noah says, frowning his confusion, and everyone blinks up at him like they hadn’t even known he was there. He points at Adam, addressing him, “Didn’t… you spend the day at Monmouth Manufacturing?”

Your stomach drops.

Adam frowns back. “What?”

“I…” Noah looks between you and Adam, perplexed, caught on a stutter. His eyes widen when he sees your expression. “I thought I, uh… um?”

“I was working all day, Noah,” Adam clarifies.

“Telling fibs again, Noah,” you murmur darkly to him and he fixes a wide-eyed stare on you. Your hand clenches around the stem of the milkshake. “Never trust the dead.”

“Noah?”

He looks around his table of friends, baffled. He flicks one last scared look over to you before he smiles his timid apology at Adam. “S-Sorry. I think I got confused…”

“It’s probably all that terrible music Ronan plays,” Gansey says, wrestling his milkshake from your iron grip. “It often sounds like people in distress.”

“Ha ha,” you say, and then you lay a hand on Noah’s shoulder. Well, not so much lay as _slap_ , because Noah jolts underneath you. His expression tightens as your hand squeezes him. You force a smile that has far too much teeth to be friendly. “Noah. Buddy. Help me pick out a drink.”

You stand up from the booth and wait for Noah to follow you. He creeps around the table and stands, nervous and unprepared, like he already knows that you don’t need him to help you pick out a drink. Already he looks more translucent, more insubstantial; you’re scaring him away. But you try to make a malicious face that promises the next run-in will be a hell of a lot worse if he decides to be a coward and fade out now.

You walk to the counter, past the counter, and out into the parking lot. You wait until the front door shuts before you seize him by the front of his shirt and haul him back against the exterior of Nino’s. He whines, more out of fear than pain – does he even feel pain? He made barely any sound at all against the brick wall – and you try to keep him pinned there, try to keep him from disappearing.

“How does one go about threatening the dead, Noah?” you ask airily. “Should I piss on your grave? Remove your bones from the ley line?”

“Why are you threatening me?” Noah whimpers, and you put a little more of your weight across his shoulders.

“What exactly do you think you saw today?”

“I didn’t see anything! I-I just heard Adam and you in your bedroom –”

“Creepy little shit,” you snarl at him and he shields his face from you, like he’s expecting a blow. You realise that you’re being unnecessarily cruel and you take a deep breath, step back and let him stand on his own. He gazes up at you, guarded and wary. “ _Look_ … you can’t tell anyone. Okay?”

“Or you’ll piss on my grave, got it,” he says, and you roll your eyes. You watch as his expression becomes shocked, commiserative. “Woah… I… I can’t believe Adam would do that to poor Blue, though. I can’t believe…”

You shake your head at him. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“Well he’s _cheating_ on her!” Noah cries, and you slap a hand to your face. You can’t exactly blame him; you haven’t been very clear about what the secret was. You can’t possibly expect him to just arrive at that conclusion on his own.

“Noah, Noah,” you try to calm him down and make him listen, keeping him close. “Adam’s not cheating on Blue. The Adam in Monmouth today was a different Adam.”

He squints his eyes at you. He probably thinks _you_ think he’s thick. “A _different_ _Adam_?”

You nod. “I, um…” You wet your lips. You glance around to check that no one’s watching you or listening in. “You see, I um… you know how I can pull shit from my dreams?” you ask and Noah nods, still a little slow on the uptake. “Well, as it turns out, I can pull shitty people from my dreams too.”

It takes another moment. But when it registers, Noah’s eyes blow wide and his mouth _drops._ “ _You created Adam.”_

“Yeah, yeah, let’s just get the God joke out of the way.” You sigh and check no one’s standing right behind you again. “ _Yes,_ I made an Adam. I call him Dream Adam. And Dream Adam is _very_ different to _that,_ ” you point back inside Nino’s, “Adam. For one fucking thing, he’s not dating Blue.”

“ _Ohhhh,_ ” Noah breathes, full of raw knowing and wonder, and you grit your teeth at him.

“You can’t say a fucking word about it. I’m serious, Czerny.” You take a menacing step forward, forcing Noah back against the brick wall. You feel your eyes sharpen and cloud over with something deadly. “You’d never see me or Adam in the same room again if this ever got out.”

“I won’t – I wouldn’t tell anyone, I promise,” Noah stammers back at you, and you already know that you believe him. He wouldn’t tell a soul, even if he wanted to. He values your friendship, and he values the peace and harmony of his friend group – the only people to this date who know he exists. He wouldn’t risk it. You know him better than that.

You step away from him. You give a terse nod and slap him once on the shoulder. “C’mon,” you say, throwing open the door and diving back inside. “Gotta look casual.”

“Can I see Dream Adam later?” he asks, sounding _way_ too excited.

“Ehhh, sure. Later.”

\------

Noah doesn’t even stick around long enough to see you all leave Nino’s. He sputters out of existence before Gansey has even finished his milkshake. The others all speculate that it’s something to do with the awakened ley line, with all the recent energy surges and power outages, but you think it has less to do with that and more to do with the fact that he wants to see Dream Adam. You’re not too upset with him over it. You think Adam– _Dream_ Adam could use a little company while you’re out, trying to put in appearances, trying to get on with life.

You don’t actively participate in the conversation; it’s mostly dictated by Gansey and Blue anyway, with a few rare inputs from Adam when he’s feeling left out.

You take the time to steal careful glimpses of him, when you know that no one’s looking. You’re awfully good at it. You’ve memorised his patterns well. You know exactly when he’s due to space out, or spare Blue a lovesick glance, or throw a bitter look at Gansey. You’ve noticed that he doesn’t look at you very much, and you don’t know how to feel about that. Whether it should make you miserable or relieved.

He’s different to your Adam, this real one. He’s a lot less rosy and a lot dirtier. He’s sullen and exhausted in every move that he makes, deep in his bones, down-trodden. He’s all kinds of broken and bruised, months after his last bruise has healed. He scratches his nails over his skin like he doesn’t quite feel right in it, like it’s not his own skin but just an itchy suit he puts on every day to make the people still in his life happy.

You want to help him. But you’re starting to think he doesn’t want to be helped.

Or maybe that he thinks he shouldn’t be.

They get into a mild fight, all three of them. Adam accuses Gansey for the third time of paying for his rent on the sly – you’re starting to regret you ever did that for him; it only caused Gansey so much trouble – and Blue accuses Adam of showing violence in front of her, as a threat, that next time it won’t _be_ a wall, it’ll be her face. If the money issue doesn’t rile Gansey, _that_ claim certainly does.

You toss a tip onto their table and leave. You don’t think they even notice.

Reality is a lot sicker than you remembered.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops sorry this took me so long to get back to - I haven't really done chaptered works in a while :V 
> 
> HUGE HUGE kudos to my beta [Kiiouex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex) for catching all of the stupid mistakes I didn't lmao

You burst back into Monmouth to find Gansey already home, attaching popsicle sticks to the roof of a little model Henrietta home. He doesn’t glance up when you enter but the smell tips him off.

“Pizza again?”

You pause for a moment before you grunt back. You quickly cross the room back to your bedroom; the pizza boxes are greasy and hot on your palms, enough to make them sweat. You’re just about to fling open the door when you feel Gansey’s presence taking up the entire room behind you and you peek over your shoulder to see him just a couple of feet away. It startles you. “ _Geez_ , man, can’t you give a guy his space?”

His eyes are a little squinted and it comes off as suspicious. You’re not sure if it’s intentional or if he’s just completely, totally blind without his contacts. “We’re still on for this weekend, right?” he asks. “Remember I said we’d dredge the lake?”

You stare back at him. You feel annoyed and defensive, and your responses aren’t just tinged with it; they’re infused. “I’ll let you know.”

You rest your hand on the loose doorknob, but of course you won’t open it until Gansey is back on the other side of the room. You have to be so careful here. Before you left, you’d _told_ them to leave the music on so Gansey wouldn’t hear them talk, but they’re not like you; they’re too goddamn polite. Too damn nice.

Gansey tries his best to take it all in stride, but you still see little flickers of disappointment to his smile. “What else will you be doing?”

“ _Nothing,_ man,” you sigh, exasperated. You paw uselessly at the handle to your door; _god,_ you want to be back in there so badly. You were only out an hour for another beer and pizza run, but that was a small eternity right there. “I said I’ll let you know.”

He’s quiet for a moment but he doesn’t move away. “Is everything okay?” he asks, and you _groan._

“Everything’s just _peachy,_ Gans.”

You’re snippy, sure, but there’s no real heart behind it and you think he believes you. You’ve been secretive and avoidant and a shut-in lately – even more than usual – but you haven’t stormed the streets to race Kavinsky to the death, and you haven’t swung your fists at strangers or picked fights with Declan or broken anything in days. You’ve been channelling your energies… elsewhere.

His eyes drop to the six pack and the RTDs – isn’t it just typical that Adam would prefer RTDs, the fruit – and you have to admit that, to Gansey, it might look as though you’re trying to drown yourself in drink.

“That’s a lot of booze,” he comments.

“I’m a thirsty guy.” You try not to smirk; Noah had called you something similar just earlier. “Look, man, I know you’re lonely or whatever but…” You put your hand out helpfully to him. “Why don’t you hit up Re-- uh, Adam, hm? Why don’t you pester him?”

Gansey’s eyes turn sad on you all of a sudden and your heart sinks. It doesn’t plummet into the floor like it used to wherever Real Adam was mentioned, but it still _sinks_ , and you realise that you probably don’t even want to know what shit that boy is in now.

“He’s pulling a lot of hours at his new job,” Gansey sighs. “No time.”

You almost feel bad. You almost _want_ to let Gansey on into your bedroom and show off the rosy, New and Improved Adam, and let him console and fix up as much of this Adam as he wants to, without being shunted aside at every step. Not that there’s very much of this one to fix.

You can’t, though. Not yet. You can’t trust that Gansey won’t take it badly and ruin everything.

You shake your head at him. “Sorry, man. But, um…” You jovially hit him in the arm, but he reacts like you just punched him in the gut. “Have a good night, yeah?”

You’re done waiting for Gansey to leave you alone, so you boldly crack open the door just wide enough to slip yourself and your pizza boxes through. You flash him one last guiltless smile before you shut the door and lock it up behind you. You turn and grin to see your two favourite boys right now: Noah by your surround-sound, sifting poignantly through your 90s CDs, and Adam – Dreamy Adam – sprawled upside down on your bed in your boxes and your muscle tee.

The pizza boxes and booze fall to the side as you drop down to your bed and smother him with a kiss.

Noah puts another Nirvana album into your stereo and the first track blasts out of the speakers in waves of sound. He fiddles with the volume for some time before he suddenly says through the noise, awkward as ever, “Uhh… d-do you guys need a minute?”

 _I’ll need more than just one minute,_ you think, your teeth closing around Adam’s bottom lip, but of course Adam pushes you off and says, “Sorry,” to Noah. He’s not nearly as rude as you are.

“Yeah, _sorry,_ Noah,” you sneer, not sorry at all. Adam scoots out of the way as you chuck down the boxes and empty out the bag. “You’re welcome,” you say in advance. You kick off your shoes and sit pressed up beside Adam, and Noah crawls into what little space you’ve left him, like a pet.

It’s hard to talk and listen when Kurt Cobain is wailing about how he doesn’t have a gun, but you work around it. “So,” you say, “do you two just sit here and pine for me when I’m gone? You paw at the windows while Gansey patrols the area?”

You and Adam both reach for a slice while Noah stares at the pizza like he really wishes he could still eat it.

“I was pining for dinner, actually,” Adam replies, but you absolutely refuse to believe him. Another feature of this new Adam that makes him superior to the old one is that he actually _accepts_ all of the little treats you offer him. Not once has he declined anything you’ve given him. He eats what you hand to him, he _drinks._ Not once has he uttered the word ‘pity’.

You don’t believe in perfect, but you think that he’s the closest thing to.

He has your attention when he drops an unhappy look at his next slice. “You know, this is the second pizza I’ve had in three days.”

You swallow your mouthful and wash it down with some beer. “What, you don’t like pizza? Could’ve told me sooner.”

He smiles meekly. “I think I’m getting just a little bit sick of pizza.”

You nod once. “Well… What do you feel like instead?”

He drops his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know.” He stares at your locked door and sips absently at an RTD, this one lemon and lime-flavoured. You imagine when you next kiss him that he’ll taste sharply of lemonade. Your free hand smooths over his bare thigh, comforting and assuring – so unlike you. You’re a creature of violence, of brutal honesty and dead-ends and burning fuses, yet here you are. “I guess I just… want to go out sometime.”

You sigh and run a hand over the back of your head. You’re due for another buzz cut soon. “It’s gonna be hard to sneak you out past Gansey,” you mumble. “In a few weeks he goes to D.C.; I’ll take you out then.”

Adam smiles in a way that makes you think he won’t hold out until then, and you’re back to square one: wondering what exactly the fuck it is you’re doing, keeping him in here, sneaking him around like this. Chainsaw spends a significant amount of her time in a _cage,_ and she still has more freedom than Adam. She’s not nearly as trapped.

You don’t want to think about it.

You just want to kiss every inch of him until you can’t feel your mouth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :O watch out - the Fun Police is here
> 
> I've been really slack when it comes to crediting my beta - I just need to make it very clear that p much ANYTHING I've posted on a03 since the middle of last year has been beta'd by the awesome [Kiiouex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex) and she's the reason why you don't get confused, jumbled sentences like "Adam over one over" and "I'm a thirty guy" etc etc so THANK YOU BETA <3

You notice more and more inconsistencies each time you have a run-in with Real Adam – and it really does feel more like a run-in than a meet-up. Your Adam is slender; Real Adam is skeletal. Your Adam looks like he has both the time and the funds to sleep decently; Real Adam looks as though he’s working himself to death. Your Adam reacts to touch like no one has ever laid a hand on him in his life; Real Adam flinches whenever anyone raises their hand too quick for a fist-bump. Your Adam’s skin is tan and rose; Real Adam’s hair is the colour of dirt.

You happen to arrive at school early, which is an anomaly in itself, let alone the anomaly that you arrive before _Gansey._ Which is funny, considering you watched the Pig pull out of Monmouth’s carpark a whole ten minutes before your own BMW.

Maybe the Pig broke down again. But you didn’t see it on the side of the road.

You loathe phones, especially yours, but you still take it out and text Gansey, just to stop Real Adam from talking to you. It’s cruel, you know, but you’ve already had the mind-blowing revelation yesterday that you don’t want him anymore. He’s a crude, faulty prototype; now you own the sleeker, sexier, more seductive 2.0.

You’re a fucking bastard but you’ve known it for years. You came to terms with it far too early to feel ashamed now.

You fell out of love with him like someone pushed you from a slow-moving vehicle.

The skin all around Adam’s bleary eyes is tinted blue, like he was up and about all night earning his keep. He doesn’t take his eyes off the whiteboard as he asks, “Did you see Gansey leave?”

You don’t look up from your phone either. “Should I call him?”

“We have a test next period.”

“What? No we don’t.”

You look up just in time to watch him saddle you with such a venomous face. It screams _fucking idiot,_ right at you, and your hand curls into a fist by your side.

You snap your teeth shut on a growl and call Gansey, pressing the phone to your ear. You angle yourself away from Adam, away from that face. You train your eyes on the slow tick of a wall clock while you wait for Gansey to pick up, but he doesn’t, and you chuck your phone away irritably when the call reaches his voice mail. Your phone hits the floor; its casing cracks off and the battery bounces out.

You don’t pick it up. But Adam does.

“You’re such an animal,” he mutters under his breath as he reassembles it and smacks it back down on your desk.

It takes a lot of effort on your part not to kick his chair out from underneath him.

\-----

You don’t see Gansey until second period in your next class, where the desks are separated, blanketed by turned-over sheets of paper. You remember that you do indeed have a test on some topic you don’t care about, for a subject that isn’t Latin.

Gansey strides in seconds before you’re due to start, and he looks like he’s already been through the whole day already. His uniform is crumpled, his hair dishevelled, and he has the stern eyes and set jaw of a boy who’s dealt with far too much shit today to keep being polite about it. _Good_ , you think. That’s when you like him most.

His eyes meet yours and he makes a face like it’s taking every little ounce of his strength not to backhand _you_. “You’d better have studied for this goddamn test,” he says as he rounds you and takes the empty seat between you and Adam. You raise an eyebrow at him but he doesn’t look at you again; he just fishes out some pens and makes an effort to calm down and put himself in the right headspace for a test. He never comes down on you hard for little internal tests – they’re more like prestigious quizzes, honestly – which leads you to think that he’s deliberately not saying what he really wants to say. Whatever beef he has with you, it’s clearly got nothing to do with the test.

You’re torn between two lines of thought: _fuck him,_ and _what did I do?_

He puts you in a bad mood. The pictures you draw to pass the time don’t come from a very happy place.

As soon as you hand in your blank test and head out the door, Gansey seizes you by your blazer sleeve and hauls you out into a little side courtyard, away from the tide of boys. “What the fuck?” you protest, shoving him off. You’re angry with him but, somehow, he looks even angrier than you. It’s a little surreal to look at. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, man?”

He doesn’t beat around the bush. “ _Adam_ , Ronan. You pulled another _Adam_ out of your dreams?”

“Christ,” you hiss, turning your back to him. You try your best to temper the waves of fear and shame that drown you. Your heart pounds and your blood rushes and you can feel your cheeks start to heat up too, but Gansey doesn’t let you take the time to compose yourself; he puts a hand on your shoulder and spins you back round to face him.

“They told me you’ve kept them him there—what, four days now?”

A hard, humourless laugh forces its way from your lips. “ _They?_ ” You flip off the air in the hopes that Noah is around to see it. “ _Fuck_ you, Noah. I’ll be desecrating your grave later.”

Gansey stares at you like you’re mad. Hell, maybe you are. “What were you going to do?” he demands. “Did you even have a plan? Where you just… going to keep him in your room forever and hope nobody would ever find out?”

You exhale, loud and frustrated. Clearly the wrong answer here is to admit that _yes –_ that was the plan exactly. “I didn’t have a plan,” you mutter, averting his gaze. “I told him to leave but he wouldn’t. So he stayed.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

You glance up at him and you wish that you didn’t, because he never commits; he can never just follow through and stay mad, at anybody. His fuse burnt down to absolutely nothing and now it’s clear from the pathetic look on his face that he feels some level of hurt that you didn’t come to him for help sooner. You know why you didn’t. You were selfish. You wanted Adam all to yourself. For once, he was _yours._

“Yeah, eventually,” you murmur, seconds too late.

“Were you ever going to tell _Adam?_ ”

You laugh. “No fuckin’ way. He’d kill me.”

“Yeah, he will,” Gansey agrees, too quick, too solemn, and suddenly nothing about it is very funny anymore. You think you know now where a large part of Gansey’s anger is coming from; it’s coming on behalf of Real Adam who would _absolutely_ tear you a new one. “But you should tell him.”

You groan, “ _C’mon,_ Gansey. I’m hurting nobody.”

“I think he’d disagree.”

You don’t like where this is going. It makes your blood simmer and your head scream. “He _doesn’t need to know._ Look, I know it’s hard to understand, but the Adam in my room is not _your Adam._ At this point, they may as well be completely different people!”

Gansey stares at you like he doesn’t follow. Like he can’t understand how you could do this – how you could even defend this stance.

He raises his hand a little, like he’s trying to cautiously settle a ferocious animal or an impatient child. He uses his _Gansey Knows Best_ voice on you, and you hate it. “Ronan, I realise now how you feel about him,” – you bare your teeth at him, a snarl ready in the back of your throat – “but I think it’s clouding your judgment; you _need_ to know that this is wrong _._ You’re a dream thief. You dreamt Adam and you _stole him._ You stole his image and you made this… this twisted, sickly-sweet version of him that Adam himself would _hate_ to be associated with. You’ve fetishized him. Please, Ronan – if you truly loved and _respected_ Adam, then you wouldn’t do this. You’d have told him from the start.”

 _But that’s the thing_ , you think. You don’t love Adam anymore. You only have eyes for his re-creation.

You feel your chest tighten uncomfortably.

“Please,” Gansey says, and it sounds a lot closer to a plea than a request. “He has a right to know.”

You know. You _know_ it’s wrong. You just didn’t ever want to let him go.

You have two Adams now; by the end of all this you’ll have none.

Gansey doesn’t present you with an ultimatum: _If you don’t tell him, then I will._ He doesn’t force your hand because he expects better of you, and you really wish that he wouldn’t. You have basic human decency, sure, but it’s not always so basic to you.

He doesn’t leave you alone to mull it over either. He continues to hover in front of you, wasting his morning break, fixing you with an expression that promises praise if you make the right decision, and yet bottomless disappointment if you don’t.

Your only regret is that you couldn’t have spent more time with him.

“Whatever,” you growl, looking away. You dig your hands into your pockets and throw your foot into a stone; it hits a window and startles several students inside. You wish something would’ve broken. You wish there was blood to show for it. “I’ll fucking tell him.”

You feel Gansey lay a hand on your shoulder and the coil wound deep inside of you loosens, all the tension under your skin starts to release. He’s here with you.

You’ll never let him know just how much it helps.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!!!! the big reveal!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> HUGE HUGE HUGE thanks to my beta [kiiouex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex) for really helping me through the next couple of chapters. I really lost track of what I wanted to achieve for a while there haha
> 
> As always, thank you for your support!!! <3

Gansey doesn’t let you tell Adam the news that morning break, or even in private over lunch. You can’t believe that Dick; he puts enormous emphasis on the _urgency_ of the situation, and then he tells you that you ought not to mention it until after school, so that the three of you can finish the rest of the school day “in peace, without distractions”. What good that is for you – you just sit through all your classes, not taking notes, not listening, playing out all the possible outcomes in your head and wincing as almost every single one of them end with Adam’s fist connecting with your jaw. You sit through lunch, right across from him, and feel as though you might pass out; your heart thuds that hard and fast.

By the time the final bell sounds, you think you’re too exhausted to deal with it. You’re wrung out before anything has even happened.

“Adam,” Gansey calls out to him as he starts to leave, and you hide your face in a textbook. “Adam, come to Monmouth with us. There’s something we need to discuss.”

You peek at him. He makes the exact same face at Gansey as you would: _I’m totally not bothered by this; I need to suddenly leave for a completely unrelated reason._ But he gives a terse nod and follows you both out to the school carpark.

He rides with Gansey, of course. Meanwhile, you strongly consider finding the nearest cliff and driving right off it.

What a shame Gansey doesn’t let you take the easy way out of everything.

You lock up your BMW and run up to Monmouth about a minute before they do. Your Adam is _such_ a good boy; he’s already back in your bedroom, half in your closet in case he needs to hide – in case it’s a noisy intruder and not _you_ slamming every door, your boots hitting the floorboards like a series of kicks. He beams at you – rosy and bright-eyed, barely disillusioned – and you watch him for one last wretched moment as he comes out, half-naked, his scent more yours than his prototype’s.

“You’re back early.” He smirks. One of his eyebrows lifts suggestively. “Miss me?”

You both hear footsteps and murmurs on the stairs and he strikes an alarmed expression. One of his hands reaches back to the closet, ready and willing to dart back into it again. You think he hears his own voice approaching. “Is that–?”

You seize his face. You don’t have _time –_ time to explain, time to apologise, time to say goodbye. You press one last desperate kiss to his worried lips before you have to tear yourself away, and you look back just in time for Adam and Gansey to reach the landing. They stare back at you from where you stand in your doorway, but not in a way that betrays they saw your most recent creation.

Adam walks around what is technically Gansey’s bedroom; he surveys the ever-growing Henrietta model like he hasn’t visited in some time. “I’ve got work in an hour,” he says, by way of _let’s get this over with._ Already he sounds on the defensive.

You don’t miss Gansey’s eyes flickering over to you, and Adam doesn’t either. He stands there, too stiff to take a seat until he’s offered – and even then he’d probably never take it – and regards you like you’re a piece of gum on the bottom of his shoe. You almost want to tell him _,_ right then and there: _I’ve fucked you._

You also want to tell him that he should save some of that raw emotion for later; he doesn’t know yet the depths of revulsion he should feel for you.

You cross your arms and lean against the doorframe, indignant where you probably shouldn’t be.

Adam throws out his hands, exasperated. He’s a quiet wreck under stress. “ _What?_ ”

You are too. “If you’ve got somewhere else to _be_ then–”

“Ronan,” Gansey chides, and it shuts you up. You bite your tongue and start over. _Don’t be a pansy; just fucking tell him._

“A few days ago,” you mumble, lowering your stony gaze to the floor where it can hurt no one. “I dreamt about you. And… I pulled you out of my dreams.”

He’s not slow like Noah was; instantly his eyes round with understanding, shock. “Me?”

You nod shamefully. “Yeah. I made another you.”

It takes Adam a moment of glassy-eyed silence to recover. He doesn’t look particularly _upset_ , but that’s probably because he doesn’t know your secret yet. It was the perfect secret; no one knew, and you buried the truth so deep inside yourself that it barely even registered half the time either. Now everyone will fucking know. That’s one more secret you’re forced to give up to the world; soon you won’t have any left.

Adam refocuses on you and asks in a controlled voice, “Where is he now?”

You look over at Gansey, who just nods back at you like a parent to their kid in a hospital. Like he knows it hurts, but you have to do it anyway. For your own good.

A sigh cuts out of you and you lean back to call into your bedroom, “ _Adam._ The jig’s up. Get out here.”

Adam frowns at you, bewildered, concerned, and a tense silence falls like a blanket over everyone as they hear some rustling from your room. Slowly, uncertainly, your Adam creeps out of the closet and stands in your shadow. Real Adam stares at him over your shoulder like he’s not quite sure what he’s looking at; a monster or an angel. One and the same, in your opinion.

The apple in Adam’s throat bobs as he swallows. His eyes look shiny. “Come out,” he says, suddenly hoarse, and Dream Adam indulges him.

Real Adam makes a choked noise like someone punched all the air out of him.

You’re impatient to get on with it, but you’re forced to wait. Even Gansey takes his time, running his eyes up and down and all over every inch of your Adam and slyly checking the original, picking out all the little inconsistencies. Spot the difference.

It never really occurred to you until now what Real Adam would want to do with him – how to handle having two of himself in the world. You can feel your Adam shake beside you, and you wonder if it’s just as surreal as it for Real Adam; seeing your double, in plain sight, no angled mirrors involved. Reflected the wrong way.

“He’s not quite a replica of you,” you say, trying to move the conversation along, trying to soften the blow. You stand apart from your Adam and he stands very still for you as you wave your hands over him. “As you can see, he’s… pinker. He doesn’t have an accent.” _He’s not nearly as shitty about everything as you are._ “His ear isn’t busted; he can hear just fine. He hasn’t made any deal with Cabeswater.” _He fucks like a champion._ “And he’s a bit well-fed too. That’s my fault, though. Nothing but pizza.”

“Pizza,” Real Adam echoes, and he sounds so very small and faraway, like he might be in shock. He can’t seem to look away. You don’t know how many minutes it’s been since he blinked.

The wonder wears off Gansey first, and he walks up to stand side-by-side with Real Adam. He looks over and checks Adam’s eyes, to see if he’s still present. His shoulder dips under the reassuring weight of Gansey’s hand.

Real Adam suddenly blinks, and there’s definitely moisture there. He pretends there’s some dust in his eye and, as always, you let him. “How, um… You just… had a random dream about me, and…? There I was?”

“And there you were,” you mutter, avoiding Gansey’s eye. _Christ_ , he doesn’t actually expect you to admit the words ‘wet dream’, does he?

Real Adam shakes his head just a tiny fraction like he still can’t understand. _Good,_ you think. The longer you can put him off working it out, the better.

“You waited a whole day to tell me?” he says, and you can’t ignore the look Gansey fixes you with now. You feel your stomach plummet.

“Actually, uh….” You dip your eyes and run a hand over the back of your head. You definitely need another buzz cut soon. Your heart hammers in your chest but the words somehow topple out anyway. “This happened four days ago.”

There, right there. He looks at you for the first time in however many minutes, since your creation stepped out. He’s found something substantial to zero in, something concrete and _real_ and objectively fucking awful, and his eyes crease at you with distress. You don’t ever lie, no, but you’re not exactly truthful either. You lied by omission. You do it all the time. You do it every day.

“ _Four_ days?” he cries, and you nod, nonchalant so as to mask how disappointed in yourself you are, but all it does is make him more frustrated with you.

You expect him to lunge and bite your head off, but he doesn’t. He rounds on Gansey and declares accusatorily, “ _You_ knew about this,” which leaves you speechless and sends Gansey into a panicked spiel about how he _didn’t_ know about this _,_ how he’d _never_ keep this secret, how he only found out this morning, when he’d forgotten his phone, and had to return to Monmouth, and heard music playing from Ronan’s room, and–

“ _Shut up,_ ” you shout, tired of this shit, and they both look at you. A cruel smile forms on your face and you slit your eyes at Adam. “I get it. Blame the handler, not the dog, right? Well fuck you – and Gansey had nothing to do with this. If it weren’t for Gansey finding out then _this_ Adam,” you turn to gesture him and you’re thankful that he’s still here with you, “would still be living in my room.”

Adam regards you with wide, resentful eyes like he thinks he doesn’t know you anymore. But he never even knew you at all. “That’s _fucked up_ , Lynch,” he breathes.

“Yeah, I know it’s fucked up. You think I planned for this? You think I have any semblance of control over what I dream, let alone what I fuckin’ create?”

“Why didn’t you just _tell me?_ ” he yells, and you don’t miss the small hysterical note to his voice when he does. His Henrietta accent slips out here and there, and you don’t think he even notices. “Why did you make it _weird –_ why did you keep him in your room and hide him and not tell anyone about it?”

You grind your teeth. _So this shit wouldn’t happen._

“Noah knew,” Gansey cuts in quietly. You notice Adam’s fists tremble by his sides. “Noah tried to convince me to keep it secret.”

“Yeah, because _I_ told him to keep it secret,” you growl.

Adam’s head falls sharply into his hands and rubs in such a vicious way at his face; like there’s _ants_ in him, underneath the skin of his cheeks, in his tear ducts, and he can’t seem to make them stop crawling _._ When he resurfaces, you think it’s a miracle his face isn’t bleeding; he’s red with tears and wrath and humiliation, and you feel so fucking miserable that you did this to him. You can’t deny that this is the absolute worst way to find out one of your friends has a crush on you.

Of all the people this could’ve happened to. _Adam._

You feel like scum.

 _“I’m not a thing!”_ he finally shouts, all suppression of his roots gone now. It’s difficult enough trying to hear him when his voice is tight with tears, let alone when he lays the Henrietta accent on thick. “I’m not a _thing_ you can just copy and keep in your room for yourself, like…! Like a _fucking sex slave._ ”

You wince. But you don’t deny it; you just keep your head down.

“How dare you,” you hear your Adam breathe from your side, and there’s a note of something there, just as raw and throaty as Real Adam. There’s no trace of an accent, but you think that isn’t to say he’s not upset. You think he’s very upset. “Can’t you see that _I’m you?_ Do you really think so low of yourself that you can’t see me as anything other than a slave?”

Your eyes flick up to watch Real Adam’s reaction and it’s quite clear from the look on his face that he’s surprised Dream Adam is talking back to him, that he’s even capable of speech other than “please fuck me”. His face is alert and hot and responsive like fire, and his fists are still knuckle-white by his side. You wish he’d put those away.

“Being in a relationship doesn’t mean anyone has possession over you,” your Adam continues and Real Adam’s face wrinkles with revulsion; you go back to avoiding his eye.

“ _He_ has possession over you,” Real Adam cries, and points his finger at you like a death sentence. “ _He made you._ You’re _his_.”

Dream Adam takes offence; you hear it so plainly in his voice. “I don’t have to be here. I can leave anytime I want to.”

Real Adam can’t get the words out fast enough. “Then _why the hell don’t you?_ ”

“Because I don’t want to.”

You think you see it, out the corner of your eye. You’ve spent months watching Adam without his notice, trying to give context to his expressions, trying to interpret all the little quirks that he never voices. You see a flash of pure and unmitigated _fear_ for just a moment, and then it’s gone, overshadowed by the turbulent mix of everything else. Most of all he looks sick – the heavy breathing, the shaking, the sheen of sweat under his hair – like if he doesn’t leave now then he’ll upchuck all over Gansey’s floor.

He can’t see it. He can’t reconcile himself – the boy who refuses hand-outs, who works and studies tirelessly, who has vowed to build himself a gilded skyscraper of success from the Henrietta dirt and will do it without acknowledgments – with the mirror image across from him, claiming his name and doing everything wrong.

He can’t see it and he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t say anything else, to either of you. He eyes up your Adam like he badly needs a swift axe to the head, and he stares at you like he can’t fathom how someone could love him and yet do this to him. Love is sick, love is a joke.

He mutters to Gansey, “I’m going to work,” and turns to leave.

He slams the door harder than you’ve ever heard Adam Parrish slam a door.

“…Well,” Gansey murmurs, flashing you a sad smile that still somehow seems inappropriate. Always compelled to the fill the silence when there’s no reason to. “That could’ve… no, that definitely went about as well as it could have.”

You heave a weary sigh, mostly guttered, but just a teensy bit relieved. It’s done, it’s out of the way. Dream Adam leans his cheek on the shoulder pad of your blazer and you really don’t have the heart nor the strength to push him off; you just let him nestle there and you gently lean your head back on his. You eye Gansey very carefully as he watches the two of you, and a small array of expressions pass over his face: surprise that you’re capable of physical affection towards another human, followed by the kind of self-conscious embarrassment that’s born of witnessing other people’s PDA, and it lastly settles on the sad realisation that you’re piteously in love. But not with the real thing.

“So what happens now?” you mumble.

Gansey blinks at you and then chews on his bottom lip. “I have absolutely no idea.”

You scoff. “That’s a first.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ronan gets Bad Vibes hmmmMMMMM
> 
> this chapter actually suffered from quite a bit of rewriting haha so thank you [kiiouex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex) for helping me sort it out. Um so if things stay on schedule then this story should be finished by the next chapter? ????? maybe????? and then onto other fics I started and never finished haha
> 
> Thank you for the support!

You think you’re maybe in the clear. You walk into school the next day and nothing slams into you like a truck without brakes. Real Adam’s there and he aggressively doesn’t talk to you, but he’s always done that. Today it’s just slightly more aggressive than usual. He talks to Gansey as if nothing is out of the ordinary, about everything and anything other than the existence of his dreamt-up doppelganger, and the fact that said doppelganger is probably almost definitely fucking Ronan. Of his own free will, no less.

You gratuitously wonder what Adam’s night might’ve been like, when he retired after a long day on his feet and had to mull it over: what you made him into. You wonder if he felt violated by you on some deep and impenetrable level, and your immediate answer to that is _yeah._ You wonder if he felt betrayed by you – not because you had a crush and never admitted it, but because you _acted_ upon it without his consent when you were supposed to be his friend first – and your immediate answer to that is _yeah._ You wonder if he turned over in his head all the little things you two must do behind closed doors, if he felt sick and weak and filthy to know that you’ve had your hands on him, that you’ve been inside him, that you’ve made him breathe your name into your bedsheets. _Yeah._

You wonder if what little furniture he owns is all in pieces now.

You wonder if that’s why his hands are red and scraped and sore, because you don’t buy that tripped-and-had-to-catch-myself-on-gravel story for a second.

At the end of the day, Adam parts with you and Gansey for his work as usual, and you don’t even bother to wave. You slump back into your car, Gansey in his, and you pull up into Monmouth’s parking lot a full two minutes before he does. He’s Richard Gansey III, but he drives like Richard Gansey I, and Richard Gansey I has been dead three years.

You don’t bother to hide him anymore; what would even be the fucking point? Your Adam has the same idea; he stays put when you both quiet at the creak of the stairs, and he turns to stare wide-eyed at Gansey, who stares wide-eyed right back.

It’s another minute of awkward small talk and averted eyes before they start to chat, like old friends who haven’t met in some time but all the love is still there. Even Noah materialises out of nowhere and sits between them like he’s been there the whole time. You sip at a beer and sit on the floor and just listen as Gansey tentatively broaches a whole number of topics that he’s pleasantly surprised to find aren’t immediately shut down: what of Dream Adam’s memories, of his five-day relationship with Ronan, of his likeness to Real Adam, of his aspirations, of his overall level of contentment. Your Adam finally admits to him that he has yet to actually see food that isn’t smothered in mozzarella, and Gansey offers to take him to a fancy little place in town, first without thought and then without much hope.

Gansey just about falls off his bed when Dream Adam tells him that he’ll have to pay because he has no money.

You elbow Gansey as he’s donning a navy pea coat, out of earshot of your Adam. “Admit it. He’s less of a shit than the real one.”

Gansey pretends he didn’t hear you.

You don’t know if he stands on your foot on accident or if it’s a petty attempt to associate pain with the awful shit you say.

\----

You’re halfway done with your plate of calzone when Gansey’s phone hums and he politely excuses himself to take the call. You don’t think much of it – maybe it’s Malory, maybe it’s his mum, maybe it’s the National Association for Pretty Rich Boys asking if he’ll represent again, three years running – but you know who it is when Gansey’s jovial smile withers away. He flashes a look at you that you think was meant to be more of a glance, to check that you weren’t watching. He puts his back to you and then you know for sure that something’s wrong.

Your Adam asks if he can have the rest of your calzone if you’re not going to touch it, and you tell him not to bother. A waiter rounds the table to top up everyone’s water and asks for the third time if Noah’s sure he doesn’t want anything.

Gansey strides back to the table and you stand to leave. “Adam?” you guess grimly.

He nods once. “He’s at Monmouth. He said he’ll wait for us, but I don’t think he’s… in the mood for waiting.”

You throw on your leather jacket as the other two hastily leave their seats. “I’ll drive then.”

“Monmouth could be on fire,” Gansey says, “and I still wouldn’t let you drive.”

You think there may very well be a chance that Monmouth _is_ on fire, but you don’t tell him that. You think Adam is capable of burning everything to the ground; Gansey doesn’t even consider it.

When you arrive back at Monmouth, you see Adam’s bike leant against the brick exterior. You don’t race up the stairs ahead of everyone else for once; you dither and dally and let the one person who’s better equipped to deal with one of Adam’s moods take the lead. You find him in the dark on the leather couch, picking at the dirt under his nails, rubbing bruises into his wrists absently. He looks up when the door closes behind you and you don’t think anyone misses the twinge of _hurt_ that spits in face when he sees the four of you together, his position smoothly filled.

You know what it looks like to him: a fairly transparent attempt to replace him with someone more pleasant, someone more obedient, with less pride and ambition – just a pretty little pink tart to have on your arm as you drive somewhere that doesn’t have a three-dollar menu. But it’s not like that.

You don’t think he’d believe you if you tried to tell him, so you don’t waste your breath.

Real Adam just breathes for a moment, and then he turns to you all, poker face back on, and he opens out his hands. “I have a plan,” he says. “I think I know what to do with… that Adam,” he awkwardly points at your Adam, who stares awkwardly back. “He should stay with me.”

A laugh punches its way out from your throat and your Adam jolts from beside you. “You can’t be serious,” you laugh, and you wonder why you’re so giddy all of sudden because there’s nothing funny about this. You feel sick. “You can barely feed yourself; what makes you think you can feed him too?”

“Two Adams,” he reasons calmly. “Two incomes. I’ve run some calculations and I think I’ll actually save more money this way. It’s perfect. He can work while I study.”

Something ill and off-balance sits in the pit of your stomach, but you’re not entirely sure what put it there. All you know is that you want it out. “You’re gonna make him work? To pay _your_ way through school? Sounds like you want to treat him more like a slave than I ever did.”

Adam levels a look at you like your opinion stopped mattering a long time ago, and someone shoves at you from your side. You’re inclined to think it’s Gansey until your Adam chides, “Stop referring to me as a slave. It sounds like a good plan.”

You flash him a look. You don’t know if you heard that word quite right, because it sounded an awful lot like ‘ _good’_ for a second there. “What?”

Your Adam shrugs. “I think it’d be nicer for me, to get out of this place and keep busy. I still have all the same memories and knowledge and skills as Adam, I _look_ like Adam. And I can’t attend school; why shouldn’t I take up his jobs and work while he studies?”

“Yes,” Gansey agrees, and you’re mildly horrified to see a smile on his face. He thumps a fist into his open palm like he meant to say _Of course_. “It’s positively symbiotic.”

“Gansey,” both Adams groan at the same time, followed by an uncomfortable and embarrassed silence.

“Mutually beneficial,” he clarifies. “If Adam – uh, the _dreamt-up_ Adam takes, uh, the _original_ Adam’s afternoon shifts then that’s more time we can dedicate to Glendower.”

Your Adam smiles warmly. “Sounds good to me.”

“ _Wait_ , wait, wait,” you complain, fingers digging like needles into your Adam’s shoulder, and you watch Real Adam settle a thinly patient gaze on you. You’re upset by how _not_ upset everyone seems to be about this. “What’s the catch here?” you ask him, suspicion thick in your voice. “What do you _really_ want with him?”

Real Adam frowns. “I… just told you. I’m going to use him to my advantage.”

Your eyes narrow. You don’t like the way he’s phrasing things.

You suddenly notice that your bedroom door stands wide open, not the way you left it, and the corner of your lip pulls into a sneer.

“Ronan,” your Adam talks down to you, like your suspicion is unwarranted and just silly. He places a hand over yours on his shoulder, and you’re captivated by his eternal blue eyes, but you don’t miss the way Real Adam completely faces away so that he doesn’t have to look at a twisted incarnation of himself give _you_ of all people affection. “It’s fine. I’ll still live at Monmouth. You’ll see me every night.”

“You have to come with me tonight,” Real Adam cuts in, still completely turned away. “I need to tell you what I’m working on, who the new manager is.”

“Just one night,” your Adam murmurs to you. It’s like he can’t even see the desperation in your stare; he just smiles back at you like it’s only love and present company that tethers his patience with you. “It’s _fine,_ Ronan.”

“I can drive you there,” Gansey offers, fetching his keys from his pocket. He senses that whatever moment the two of you are sharing has yet to pass, and he awkwardly excuses himself. “Adam, I’ll just load up your bike. I’ll be in the Pig.”

He leaves and it’s suddenly just the three of you. Real Adam is still turned away. You catch a flash of blood on his hand that he smears into the dark leather of the couch.

Your stomach somersaults mercilessly.

“Ronan.” Your Adam forcibly removes your fingers – more like claws – from his shoulder. He shakes his head a little at you, a small smile on his lips. “Your dependence isn’t as endearing as you think it is. Seriously. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You suppose you don’t have goddamn a choice.

“I’m picking you up after work.” You say it more like a threat than an offer but your Adam still nods like it’s a lovely idea. He smooths a hand down your front and your heart stutters; you start to wonder if you’re wary for good reason or if you’re just that reluctant to let him go.

“Whatever makes you happy.”

He puts his arms around your neck and you watch, from over his shoulder, Real Adam crane just enough to see you two out the corner of his eye. A thrill of white-hot resentment pulses through you and you don’t hold back just for his sake; you take your Adam’s face between your hands and you kiss him like resuscitation, sloppy and passionate and gratuitous, all for show, and you actually smirk into it when Adam suddenly stands and bolts out the door.

“You’re an asshole,” your Adam mumbles into the kiss, and you finish it proper and tender. Far too tender for someone that’s full of sharp edges and unmarked sudden drops like you.

Adam bites your lip softly and then he’s out of your arms. He parts with a wave, and the silence that suddenly fills the room hurts like a cavity in your chest.

 _Tomorrow,_ you tell yourself as your feet send empty bottles sailing through the air. They crash like an old favourite symphony. _Tomorrow you’ll see him._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINAL BONUS MEGA CHAPTER because I always listen to my awesome beta [kiiouex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex)!!! so ! this is the end!!!!! I really hope this end doesn't come as ? such a HUGE shock to anyone? (to me, it was the only natural outcome......)
> 
> anyway, thanks so much for everyone's support!!! I hope to write more raven cycle very soon lmao

The night is a hot, stifling blanket that you can’t kick off. You’re sticky all over – not in the good way – and you toss and turn restlessly for hours on end. There’s far too much space to either side of you, no body to comfort you, to distract you, to laugh “your hands not enough for you?” and fuck you into the mattress and put you to sleep. You feel just as lonely as you did almost a week ago. A _week._ You can't believe you had him for so few days and you're already this pathetically lovesick without him. He was wrenched from you just as quickly as you had wrenched him from a dream.

God. You miss the way he kept your heart racing long after he stopped touching you. You miss the way he looked at you, like no one else could ever make him feel the way you do.

You try to take your mind off it – try to think about the habits you used to have and the places you used to haunt when you couldn’t sleep, before Adam. Empty streets with blown-out lamps, Kavinsky’s white Mitsubishi with the shitty knife graphic. Smoke in your eyes, blood in your mouth, liquor running cool down your arm. You used to make the boys in your school too scared to even touch you.

You stare off to the side. How _easy_ it would fucking be to just do up your jeans, shove on your boots and storm the streets, but you don’t do it. The Real Adam never approved of what activities you considered ‘fun’, but the Real Adam never had a stake in your survival; your Adam does. Your Adam held you back in so many more ways than just one.

You don’t quite watch the sun rise, but you decide once it’s peeked over the horizon that it’s a reasonable enough hour to get up. You shower alone, you dress alone, you eat alone. You go to school with Gansey.

You wait for Parrish in the classroom. Your knee jerks up and down under your desk, and although Gansey has scolded you twice now in so many minutes, it always starts up again. You can’t help it. You’re restless and tired. You want to move, you want to collapse. You want to punch something, you want to kiss something. You want to take all of your nervous energy and sink it into _something._

Gansey finally snaps; he grabs and holds your knee to keep it still. Your other knee jerks in its place.

Adam strolls into class, mere seconds before the bell, and you leap out of your seat like your heart leaps out of your chest. Your immediate thought when you see his face is _He’s off-colour,_ but you can’t even tell what shade of tan and rose Adam is supposed to be anymore.

You don’t notice the teacher walks in behind him; Gansey grabs the back of your blazer and sits you back down, just as Adam takes the seat directly behind Gansey and fans his books out on his desk, like tarot cards. You lean back to hiss at him, “ _How is he?_ ”

“Mr Lynch,” your teacher intones imperiously and you hear the rustle and creak of several students swivelling in their chairs to stare at you. You couldn’t care less what they’re looking at; you continue to train your quietly desperate eyes on Adam – all you need is just one little indication that he’s fine, that he’s happy and keeping out of trouble – but Adam just stares coldly back. The shadows around his eyes are _dark,_ like he had an even worse night’s sleep than you did. Part of you wonders – hopes – that your Adam had just as bad a time too.

“Mr _Lynch_.”

He’s so keenly aware of all those eyes on him. But there’s still a deadened look to the way he stares at you, like he knows he doesn’t owe you shit.

 _“Mr Lynch,_ ” your teacher says, louder and more ferocious, and Gansey has to force you to face the front. You meet your teacher’s eyes far too easily, not even close to repentant, probably full of insolence, and you still earn yourself a lunchtime detention. Gansey sighs miserably on your behalf, but all you can think is thank God it’s not in the afternoon. You’d hate to have to skip and earn yourself even more detentions.

Adam is quiet throughout the day – quieter than usual, you reckon – and you can’t stand it. He spends most of his day picking out the dirt from under his nails and not looking at you. You don’t exactly expect him to tell you about the fun sleepover rumpus party he had with his dreamt-up self, but you at least want _a little_ reassurance that your Adam is fine. You ask him and ask him and ask him, and it’s not until his books are away and his food is out that he finally replies in a calm, measured voice, “He’s fine. He’s at my work. I dropped him off this morning.”

You lean back in your chair, a little satisfied.

But you know you won’t be fully satisfied until you can know for sure.

It’s your final class and you’re not even ten minutes in before you stop pretending to care about the content. You eye the wall clock like a hawk until it ticks down to the last second, and then you scoot out your chair, shoulder your bag and storm for the exit. You spend the next twenty or so seconds arguing with the teacher over respect for authority – _“You can leave when I say you can leave!”_ – until the bell finally drowns out some slur about “youths these days”, and you shove out the door. You’re the first to leave class and you’re probably the first to leave school; there’s barely any traffic at all and you make it to the automotive mechanic’s shop where Adam works in record time.

You’ve never stopped by before; you wanted to, just to say hi and bother Adam, but you never had the nerve. You put a decent amount of distance between your parked car and the others – whether they’re staff or cars dropped off for repair, you don’t know – and you wander around the place full of grease monkeys, looking for one grease monkey in particular. A man in overalls with stains to match his blackened hands asks if he can help you and your immediate response is, “Adam Parrish in?”

The man shakes his head and wipes his hands on a cloth. “Doesn’t start until four.”

You feel a lick of unease. Something ill turns over in your stomach. “He didn’t start earlier today?”

Another headshake. _No._ “He’s a student. Comes after he’s finished school. Though, if you hang about he’ll probably turn up soon.”

You don’t hang about. You turn around and walk away. You’re moving, somehow; you’re putting one foot after the other in the long grass, back to your car, but there’s something so unnervingly _still_ inside you. You recall Adam’s words from earlier, verbatim: “He’s fine. He’s at my work. I dropped him off this morning.”

They rattle around and around in your skull until they’ve lost all meaning.

You throw open your door to your BMW and settle back inside. For one wild, blind moment of panic, you have no idea what to do or where to go. But then you refocus; you start up the car and drive back the way you came.

You’re going to Parrish’s place.

\-----

You park just outside St Agnes. You slam your door, step lightly into the church – you can’t afford to be stopped by anyone who would want to chat about your brothers and your recent lack of Sunday appearances – and run up the stairs to the little set of rented flats.

You knock on Adam’s door. No answer.

You try the rickety handle. Locked. You allow yourself just one second of frozen distress before you start to pound on the door. You pound it until it rattles on its hinges, until your fist throbs.

“Fuck,” you mutter, and then the dim corridor’s temperature plummets. Your breath fogs at your mouth.

You turn to leave, but Noah blocks your way. Your heart pounds; you swallow without much success. Every nerve in your tense body screams: _something’s wrong._ “Noah,” you start in a low voice. “You okay?”

He’s on the final wooden step, his slouched back to you. His head is titled and aimed to stare off into the distance but you can’t see his face – just the back of his white-blond head. One of his hands is on the floor and it looks blurry, out of focus, not really there. You think if you tried to touch him you’d just phrase right through.

That gives you an idea.

“Noah,” you call, louder and with more purpose this time. He winces hard, like you called him something else. “Noah, can you tell me if Adam is in there?”

He doesn’t answer you. His hand on the floor curls and unfurls; the edges of him leak out, like smoke more than skin. His image turns shaky and watery.

You’re only so patient with the dead before you start to feel spooked, and you snap at him, “Cut it out, Noah. Look, can you just tell me if Adam is in there or not?”

“Adam is…” He doesn’t finish his sentence. His voice sounds just as wobbly and insubstantial as the rest of him. “Is…”

He’s scaring you. It turns you sharp and ruthless just to offset it. “ _Is?”_

You didn’t even blink; he just disappeared without warning. A shadow replaces him and it grows and grows and grows, until it resembles one of your night horrors more than it does Noah. It stutters in and out of existence, like static, like fuzzy reception, like a nightmare with not enough fuel.

You hear a faint, ethereal sound. Like wailing.

It gets louder.

Fear worms up through you like a plucked taut cord, your ears flaring, and you _run._ You press your body to the other side of the wall as you jump down the stairs, two or three or four at a time, and you throw yourself out of the church with your heartbeat reduced to nervous stammers, your breathing in shreds. You jump back into the relative safety of your car and breathe, “ _Fuck_ you, Noah,” before you speed down the street, anywhere, so long as it’s _away._

You’re on your way to Monmouth when you see Noah, clear as day, on the side of the road. You slow and gawk at him from your driver’s window while he stares back, emotionless and dead. “ _Noah?_ ” you cry, and several pedestrians stop and stare at _you_ like you’re mad.

He doesn’t respond. You don’t even think he’s quite looking at you.

He soundlessly raises his arm and points it down the street.

And then he’s gone.

You growl, low and vicious in your throat. “What in the shitting hell, Noah,” you complain, but you continue on and take Noah’s directions anyway. You drive for a bit until you hit an intersection, and then you spot a boy with a rumpled Aglionby uniform and skin as grey as the backdrop. He points to your left and you obediently turn, no idea where he’s taking you. You turn on your music to calm yourself down, but it sounds like the embodiment of a drug-induced heart attack at age 25.

It’s better than silence.

He disappears and reappears to divert you down a few more roads until you appear to be properly out of Henrietta now, driving down a wide country road that’s in the opposite direction to Cabeswater. You don’t know how many minutes it takes you to realise that Noah is on your passenger side; you swear and almost swerve into a ditch, but he barely reacts. You shout a few more obscenities at him. “ _Christ,_ Noah, will you stop fucking around and just tell me what’s going on?”

You steal another glimpse of him see tears on his face, in his eyes. You feel like an asshole. “Keep driving,” he mutters.

You don’t say anything else. You just heave a fed-up sigh and speed up.

It’s another ten minutes of silence before he suddenly says, “There.” He points to a little offshoot track coming up on your left. It’s a narrow dirt track, overshadowed by trees, possibly private property, but you pull in and drive down.

A few more miles in and Noah’s voice is so small that you almost don’t hear it: “Stop.”

You stop. You turn to Noah but he’s not beside you anymore; he’s several feet away, standing beside an unnatural pile of leaves. You frown at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says and then vanishes once more.

You’re a little bit over his theatrics. He doesn’t reappear, even as you leave your car and head on over to the pile. You look in every which direction – you’re closed in by two parallel lines of trees; you can’t even see the main road from here – and then your eyes settle on the leaves. Some look redder than others. The smell of earth is rich and damp and heady, a little sour. You kick the leaves aside and see why that is: someone has disturbed the dirt. Every other inch of ground has little tufts and patches of grass on top, but this dirt beneath you has been dug up.

A memory flashes in your eyes – car door hanging open, driveway wet with blood, tire iron hot and dry in the sun – but you don’t look.

Summer sticks to your skin but you don’t care; you roll up your sleeves and start to shove armfuls of dirt aside, part them out of your way. Dirt rubs into your clothes, browning them, staining them. You dig with your hands until they’re wrist-deep, elbow-deep, and you dig and you dig and you dig – the dirt feels moist here, feels wet here – until you brush something that drains all feeling from your body.

It’s bristly. It feels like hair.

You don’t think. Your consciousness parts ways with your body, and you hover just above yourself and watch on like a film you’re too scared stupid to look away from. You feel for something else, and a small, innocent part of you still holds out hope that it might be a small rock. A series of small jagged rocks. Rocks stuck in something soft and cold.

The part of you that has been spit in the face by reality before knows what it is. It’s a broken jaw.

Something in you _sears._ You unearth your dirty arm to find it’s patchy with blood, and you’d rather saw it off right here right now than have to carry it all the way back home with you to wash it. You wipe it on the grass, over and over and over, but it’s not coming off.

You don’t put your hand back down there. You already know who it is. You don’t need to see the shade of his skin to know who it is.

You feel like you’ve found your father dead in the driveway all over again.

The cynical part of you feels like you should be used to it by now, but you’re _not_ , you’re absolutely not – you never will be. This could happen to you ten more times and you’ll never not feel like someone’s kicked your heart out your chest.

You can’t move.

_Noah, please, don’t leave me here._

The sky darkens.

\-----

You lose track of time. The sky is a deep blue and your knees are on fire by the time you’re settled back in your car, and the sky is black by the time your car judders back into Monmouth’s parking. You don’t remember exactly how you got from A to B to C; all you know is that you did, somehow. Maybe you’re in survival mode. While your mind was lost, your reflexes took the reins for a while.

You suppose you should be happy they didn’t put you in a horrific car incident.

You run up to Monmouth’s bathroom, to strip off and wash the grime from your arms. You don’t think you passed Gansey, but if you did then surely he’ll follow you to complain about the state of your uniform. You uncap a half-empty bottle of spirits and chug it down, whatever it is; it burns like heavy-duty cleanser in your throat. You make yourself hideously drunk in no time at all, and while everything starts to slur and blur and become bearable, a little voice that sounds too much like Gansey or your brother whispers: _You’re not dealing with this very well._

You find your phone, buried in the back pocket of last week’s laundry. It has just enough battery life to call Gansey. You don’t think you sound particularly coherent but you do your best to talk slow: you tell him to find Adam and get his ass over here ASAP.

You think if you try to take even another sip of alcohol you’ll retch, but that doesn’t stop you. You just have to wait for your mouth to numb. Then it’ll be easier.

You don’t know how long it takes them both, but they do make it. Gansey walks in like he’s afraid you’re on another one of your benders; Adam follows him in like he already knows what to expect and isn’t even the least bit surprised. He looks every bit prepared to face you, and that _kills you,_ because you never wanted this.

Gansey starts to talk but you don’t let him finish; you point an accusatory finger past him, straight at Adam. “You fuckin’ monster,” you mumble, your eyes dark and sharp under a deep frown. He blinks back like he didn’t hear you. “I saw what you fuckin’ did to him. You didn’t just _kill_ him – you _butchered him_. You’re…” For just a moment, you’re completely lost for words and you shake your head helplessly. Words to describe just how fucked up Adam Parrish’s actions were have yet to be taught to you. You can’t help but almost laugh. “You’re psychotic.”

“And you’re just the pinnacle of mental health,” he responds. “A real poster boy.”

“ _Parrish!_ ” you shout, and you can’t even stop to think about what you want to do and whether or not you should do it before it happens; your bottle makes a graceful arc through the air before it shatters on the wall, spraying liquid and glass everywhere. Gansey jolts and grabs Adam to pull him out of the way but there’s no danger; you’ve lost most of your fine motor skills by now and badly missed your target. “Don’t _fuck with me –_ just _admit to what you fuckin’ did!_ ”

Gansey assesses whether or not it’s safe to approach you before he does, but you only have eyes for Parrish. He stares back at you just as coldly. “Ronan, you need to calm down,” Gansey murmurs patiently, but you take no notice of him. “How much have you had?”

“Did you tell _him_?” you yell at Adam, and your heart pounds furiously to see him side-eye Gansey in such a way that makes you think he didn’t. It makes you think that he told him something different entirely. “Dick, did you hear what happened to the other Adam?” you ask as he tries to rally you back into your room.

Gansey keeps his eyes down. “The other Adam left Henrietta, Ronan. The arrangement didn’t work out and he wanted to leave – please don’t take it too personally.”

A shrill hoot escapes you. “Is _that_ what he told you?”

Gansey stops just to raise an eyebrow at you. From the door Adam yells, “He’s drunk, Gansey. Just put him to bed and leave some water and he’ll be fine.”

Revulsion crawls up your throat like a literal demon inside you and makes you want to _scream_. The only thing in this world that hates Adam Parrish more than you is Adam Parrish.

And even then, it’s a close one.

You can’t kick him, so you kick everything else instead.

Gansey has to use a lot of force to hold you back – half because you’re breaking everything in sight, half because everything in sight belongs to _him_ – but it’s not enough; you wallop the couch and kick over trash bins and chairs, and your foot comes down hard on the miniature Henrietta township like a clumsy, tyrannical giant. In your bedroom, Chainsaw screeches from her cage. Over the rushing in your ears, you hear Gansey shout, “ _Ronan, stop!”_

“ _He’s fucking dead, Gansey!_ ” you shout back, rounding on him. He tries to contain the hurricane of destruction and emotional turmoil that you are but you just shove him away. He doesn’t know how to stop you with fists, without his soothing words; he’s no fucking match for you. He just needs to stay out of your way. “ _Parrish fucking killed ADAM._ ”

Gansey holds a hand out in front of himself, like you might lunge at any second, his eyes wide and tempered. “Adam _left,_ Ronan. You _need_ to stop acting out like this –”

“I know where his _body is,_ Gansey,” you cry, and that puts a twinge of fear into Adam’s expression. You watch the two of them exchange a bewildered glance. “Outside town – he,” you swallow, you feel sick, you try to keep it all down and not remember what your fingers touched, “he – _that_ Adam must’ve buried him last night. Look – he still has the fuckin’ _dirt_ under his nails.”

Gansey looks over his shoulder but Adam has his hands behind his back. He shoots a withering look at Gansey for even trying to see: _What does that fucking prove?_

“Noah showed me,” you tell him. “Ask Noah. Adam’s _dead,_ Gansey. _That_ Adam killed him.” You stare at him darkly over Gansey’s shoulder. “It’s still fuckin’ murder even if it’s _you,_ you cunt _._ ”

Adam shakes his head just the tiniest bit.

Gansey looks between you both, flustered and distressed, more than he dares to be in front of the two of you. You think the only reason he doesn’t believe you now is because he doesn’t _want to._ “Ronan,” he starts morosely, but you cut him off.

“Fine – fuckin’ come with me then. C’mon.” You pull his keys from his blazer pocket. “Let’s all go for a shitting drive.”

You round Gansey easily while he’s still frozen there with uncertainty, but Adam blocks your way. He has his back to the closed door, head titled up, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Every inch of his cold and collected demeanour just seems to whisper _murder._ “Don’t do this,” he mutters in a low voice, just for your ears and not Gansey’s. You can’t work out if it’s a plea or a threat. “You have no fucking right to be angry about this. You have no idea what it was like.”

“He was still a _person._ ” You drive your fist into the wall beside his head, and this time you almost hit him. It was a rather impressive wince. “I don’t fucking care if he made you _uncomfortable –_ there were better ways of handling it, Parrish. Was that your plan all along? To get him alone, away from me, and take all your feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing out on him? Did you _really_ believe you were that unlovable? _I loved you._ ”

He’s quiet for a moment. He points out, “You don’t anymore.”

You scoff. Either your vision’s blurring or you’re tearing up. “You’re right. I don’t. Not after this shit you pulled.”

“Then let’s just forget this ever happened.”

“Adam?”

You both turn to Gansey. He stares at Adam with wide, shiny eyes. He doesn’t recognise his friend. “You… you _killed_ the other Adam? _Killed?_ ”

Adam audibly hesitates. “Yeah.”

“You told me he hitchhiked to Philadelphia.”

Adam doesn’t respond.

There’s no sound but the jangle of Gansey’s keys passing from your hand to his. “Gansey,” Adam makes the barest attempt to reason with him, to talk, but Gansey just whispers, “Excuse me,” as he opens the door, eases Adam out of the way and leaves. You both listen to him mechanically drop down each step until he reaches his car. The door opens, it shuts. He sits in the Pig for an uncomfortably long time before it roars to life and snarls down the street.

You cast off from the wall and go for whatever else you can find, because you’re still far too sober for this. Glass sticks into the soles of your shoes but you don’t care. “You’ll leave if you know what’s good for you,” you threaten mildly from the bathroom fridge. He blinks at you as you glower from the doorway. For just a moment he actually looks like _your Adam_ – lost and fearful and too proud to ask for help – and it pains you. You swallow it all down. “I’ve got some mourning to do and Gansey’s not here to hold me back.”

He shakes his head softly at you. Like you brought all this misery upon yourself. “This is all your fault _,_ Lynch,” he breathes, and then he’s out the door.

When everyone’s gone and Monmouth is empty, you collapse on the couch with another bottle and cry into your hand. You don’t think it’s the first time today. Your eyes were already red and blotchy when you finally clambered back into your BMW, and crying feels less like turning on a leaky tap than it does like trying to draw blood from a stone. Something guttural and inhuman buried deep inside you has to be dragged out, and the act of crying _hurts_ just as much as not crying does, just as much as everything else.

You feel cold on one side and realise that Noah is in the room. You smother back your sobs and keep your eyes hidden. “Hey, Noah,” you sigh. You feel him lay a wraithlike hand on your shoulder and you try on one of your characteristically snide smiles. It feels off, so off. You swallow thickly. “Sorry about all this. I know I said if you ever told anyone that you’d never see any of us in the same room again, but… That was the shitty outcome anyway.”

He has no words. He just pats you uselessly.

“Playing God didn’t pan out too well,” you tell him. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”


End file.
